What a great service. What most people don't realize is the majority of ecstacy-related deaths are due to non-ecstasy pills. The drug war is one of the most futile and frustrating things in the modern world.

* Drugs are addictive and expensive. Not all of this expense is due to costs of avoiding enforcement. This can and does drive users to poverty, which has its own correlation with crime outside of drug enforcement itself

* Not all overdosing is due to "no proper information available about dosages". I'd wager that few overdoses are from first-time users, so the overdoser has some information about their own previous dosages at the very least.

> Drug users are denied jobs and treatment, so they cannot get their lives on track even if they want to.

If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?

I'm pro-legalisation, but you're hardly making a good case here by picking strawmen and showing how easy it is to beat them down.

> Not all overdosing is due to "no proper information available about dosages". I'd wager that few overdoses are from first-time users, so the overdoser has some information about their own previous dosages at the very least

The purity of drugs varies a lot, and a couple of missed steps of dilution and adulteration can easily lead to overdoses.

> If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?

I didn't say all, I said "most" of the problem with drugs is that they are illegal.

The problem is that the current system does absolutely nothing to combat the problems both you and I mention. It is a huge waste of money, time, life and resources. Sticking addicts who need treatment in jail does nothing to solve the problem.

Legalization, harm-reduction and proper education seems to be the way to go. Current "abstinence-only" drug education simply doesn't cut it. Informing users about both the risks and benefits of drug use in an unbiased, non-judgemental way would be much more effective.

All this doesn't even take into account the philosophical argument that an adult should be free to put whatever they want into their own bodies. You can't stop people from making poor life decisions.

I'm pretty sure that you can still deny someone a job for being a drug user, even if the drugs are legal. In fact, several of those things aren't solved merely by legalization and regulation. Overdoses happen on legal, regulated drugs all the time. A lot of drug related complications are due to mixing substances, which is not solved by legalization or regulation. Clean needles and paraphernalia are not necessarily "solved' by regulation or legalization, clean needles are available right now in any drug store.

Netherlands you can anonymously drop pills and powders for lab testing. Tons of kids were dropping dead buying fake mdma on the streets and this put an end to it. Same thing happened in Canada as soon as they cracked down on precursors and drove up the price the streets were filled with poisonous alternatives but unfortunately the police still shill a failed abstinence policy and as a result you get stuff like this happening everytime a bad batch floats around

Meanwhile you have people calling to abolish the FDA because markets are so much more efficient at providing safe, efficaceius pharmeceuticals. It makes no sense, real-world data from the black market shows it makes no sense.

What do you mean? The underground market is perfectly free, you have only private entities contracting with each other, with no appeal to a higher power (i.e. the law) possible. Whatever rules are in effect instead are instituted and upheld by the market participants.

What you're describing is the point in time when an entity exits the free market. How does the government control the market aside from whack-a-moleing individual entities? How does whack-a-mole have a controlling effect on entities who haven't been whacked yet?

Honestly, given how many drugs have been allowed into the market as-is through the FDA, I'm not entirely sure how effective it has been. That said, I'm all for reducing patent protections all around (and eliminating all software patents), and decriminalizing most drugs...

I'm not advocating getting rid of all testing and standards bodies... I can't speak for anyone else.

There is/was a similar organization in California called DanceSafe (which friends used). Still there: http://dancesafe.org/ You could/can mail them pills and they would test them for content ratios (not content amounts). Fantastic service to reduce harm.

Interesting that the marketplace they talk about (Evolution) closed down a couple of weeks ago with evidence of a huge Bitcoin scam. Seems you can test the honesty of the sellers but not the market :-(

The second problem is easily solved by the reviewers creating new accounts for each order. In fact it's a better test since newcomers are more likely to be screwed over by a seller than someone with a forum presence who would have more credibility if they complained.

I hate to be pedantic, but "Deep Web" is the part of the Web that crawlers can't reach, because it's hidden behind POST requests and JS actions[1], and not nefariously. "Dark Web" is the term they're looking for.

Trouble is, the academics talking about deep web don't mean a clandestine corner. They more mean private Facebook pages and uncrawlable product catalogues. Stuff that is part of the normal internet though.

It's kinda silly semantics now though, most people seem to use it to talk about illicit hidden stuff. It's like saying, that's not a Hoover it's a vacuume cleaner.

This particular article is a bit annoying though because the writer is either confused, trolling, or avoiding describing technical specifics for ethical raisins. Best kind of raisin.